An artist pal of mine we call Sandy Spider has started a new blog to spotlight her own and others creations at Zazzle, Sandy Spider’s Gifts. She is a wonderful creative person and I’m sure you’ll love what she finds to share from the wide world of Zazzle gifts.

We are still hanging in there. You may have heard the saying “like herding cats” – well, getting doctors, hospitals, clinics, insurance, and social services, not to mention my maybe employer (I have been fired for excessive absences with husbands health and then reinstated) to do their jobs and cooperate with each other and their victims, I mean, patients and clients and their families is more like herding cats on meth. I just about get them all in the pen and then discover I missed a stray or two and when I turn back to get them the rest leap out again and streak off in different directions.

Our health and social services here in the United States are set up to tear families and couples apart, keep us in poverty, deny us services, provide medicine for profit – which has no relationship to “healing”, and with any luck to kill the chronically ill or disabled as soon as the government has been drained of every possible penny for their care. Their employees are taught to manipulate through guilt, insult, and humiliation – although some would do that for free just because it makes them feel superior.

Doing the “right thing” we are all taught to do – go to school, get a degree, work all your life, love and support your spouse and family – are no guarentee whatsoever that in the end “your country will take care of you”.

For ESRD and CKD patients – be aware that your SSD is limited and you may or may not be eligible. Be aware that the “don’t worry, the U.S. government pays for all dialysis” is a lie and that AFTER you begin dialysis, and after the clinic has separated you from your family, spouse, and support systems THEN they will tell you that you must pay for your dialysis. The alternative is quite simple, of course. You. Will. Die.

For the spouses and families – after the clinic cuts you out of your beloved’s life by refusing to allow you access to the doctors or other care givers or information, social services will force you to work full time – and then use that as an excuse to remove all benefits including health insurance for all of you. This, of course, can mean that your loved one cannot get to dialysis or is left sitting for hours at a time waiting for some service to maybe take them part of the way home where they can wait outside in the weather for you to get off work and pick them up. The point is, of course, to get them to die. Then Social Security and all the other social services can keep all those dollars you put in, half of your income, for your working life. Hah. Hah.

You will be expected to be at the doctors, clinics and hospitals disposal 24-7. They can set an appointment at any time and then make you wait hours, even days. They can set an appointment, fail to provide the service, and move your loved one to the hospital without telling you, setting an appointment for surgery or other treatments. If you dare to say, “We cannot make it because we are out of gas, or because I have to work (GOD FORBID)” the doctors staff will sneer at you and say “you do not care about his health”. This from the people who delayed dialysis until he was near death because the surgeon hadn’t got his bucks from an extra surgery or two yet. The cardiac doctor who makes people wait days and days in his office for his convienence and then accuses you of not caring and endangering your spouses life by refusing to wait a THIRD day in his waiting room. I’m sorry, but if my husbands life is in immanent danger from a heart attack, shouldn’t we be in the hospital on a monitor instead of sitting in your waiting room for three days running?

Social services who refuse any benefits unless you do a job search. Insist you continue the job search even after you have found a full time job because you have to do 20 applications even if one of the first three hires you. And then threaten to terminate benefits since you are working – before you ever even get your first paycheck. Meanwhile, I’ve managed to work one day a week for three days and call in the rest of the time because I’m taking hubby to the hospital, hubby is in hospital, hubby has to go to dialysis, hubby has to have surgery and guess what I am fired. Duh. I DID mention to social services that I could not work full time since I have to transport and care for hubby. But they insist I can work full time and just let him use public services to get to the doctor, clinic, hospital from a ranch 25 miles out in the desert that no service will drive out to.

Although I have been reinstated I doubt it is going to last long. Hubby still has dialysis after all. He is still using a catheter since they fucked up both fistula surgeries and waited until the last minute to start dialysis. Those last, we hear, two days to two weeks so we’ll surely have to have it replaced soon – a full day at the hospital while the “first thing in the morning” catheter inserting doc gets around to him at 5 pm (a full day of fasting and no water for the kidney failure patient). He is already on his second catheter in less than a week.

We canceled the evaluation for kidney transplant when the institution in ABQ decided they wanted two days for testing instead of one. Of course, since we are independently wealthy (they seem to think) driving up, eating, staying in a motel, eating, driving home – that’s no problem, right? Oh yeah – I’d miss work those days, too. Ooopsie. Well, how DARE I put work ahead of my husbands health. Yeah, I agree, I think my husband is far more important, but social services figures he can just walk or ride the bus to the hospital or clinic because if I don’t work I’m a lazy scumbag. If I don’t take him to the Doctors, because I have to work, then the Drs say I’m a cold, uncaring bitch. But once he is in the dialysis clinic, they want me to get the fuck out.  I am certainly not allowed to be involved in his care or health decisions, not allowed to see his doctor with him, or the social worker, or the dietician – what the hell would I have to do with any of those people.  So I’m either a lazy scumbag or a cold hearted cunt or “just the chauffer”.

All this time, I thought I was a devoted and loving wife.

Who knew?

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